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By Mom Unplugged, June 12, 2007 9:08 pm

I have been tagged by MC Milker of The Not Quite Crunchy Parent for the “Eight Random Things About Me” meme.
It is hard to be random. My first attempt sounded a bit like an employment resume. It is also hard to think of personal things that might be interesting to you all (I don’t do “personal” very well - see #6), but please bear with me as I attempt this!

Here goes:

1. I have dual US/UK citizenship and am an Aquarius.

2. I have been an exchange student twice: a summer in Oslo, Norway at age 16 and, after having graduated from high school a year early, a year in Rouen, France at age 17. I also spent my junior year of college in Hamburg, Germany, but please don’t write to me in German! My French is good, my German (except for a few choice unpublishable words) has mostly disappeared.

3. I was an Air France flight attendant for two years so I have been to a lot of unusual places. My friend says that I am the only person she has ever met who can start a sentence with “On my way to Burundi….”

4. As a child I broke both my big toes and received absolutely no sympathy from my doctor-father. My sister thinks she has cuter big toes than I do, but I disagree.

5. My car has a license plate frame that says: “A Woman’s Place is in the Cockpit” (I am a pilot).

6. I am “not the cheerleader-type,” as my mother used to say. Nor am I a jock. I guess I am an introverted nerd.

7. My secret favorite movie is “Dirty Dancing” because I wish I could dance with Patrick Swayze (who I actually once saw on a ski slope at Santa Fe, NM!).

8. I hate white walls in my house. All my walls are a color.

MC Milker tagged me because my blog is “a relatively new blog” that she has “started to read and enjoy” (thank you!). For this very same reason, I tag Cheryl of A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool Journey.

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By Mom Unplugged, May 15, 2007 11:24 pm

I have been tagged again by Jen of Never A Dull Moment. Thank you Jen! Actually, poor Jen tagged me about a month ago, but this post has been so painful to write that I have been doing it in small stages.

I am supposed to tell you all what seven songs get stuck in my head and repeat themselves mercilessly until I am on the very brink of insanity (at least closer than I usually am).

So… here it is. In order for you to truly feel my pain, I kindly provide links to all the songs if I could find them (or sometimes just excerpts). Click the names to hear them…if you dare!

1. Push It (by that oh so unforgettably talented group Salt ‘N Peppa) - This song represents for me 80′s college dorm-life-nightmare-hell. My senior year of college there were two charming young ladies down the hall who played this song over, and over, and over, and…well, you finish the sequence here! Once heard, never forgotten. No matter how much you hate it, you will never get it out of your brain!!! It has continued to haunt me in bizarre places my entire life. The weirdest was in India while careening pell-mell through Delhi in a rickety, tumble-down taxi, fearing for my life. What comes on the, unfortunately-for-me, functioning radio? Push It. All I could think was “Oh no, this is the last song I will ever hear before I die!”

2. Another One Bites The Dust (Queen) - This one brings back good memories of the high school marching band bus on the way home after beating a “big shot band” in a competition (we were very much the underdogs except for one astonishing and inexplicable year of extreme excellence). For this reason, I actually like the song, but something about that refrain “boom boom boom…another one bites the dust!” sticks with me like a MacDonald’s Big Mac.

3. This is my husband’s pick: Proud Mary (Creedence Clearwater) - While visiting a friend’s house the teen band next door was banging out Proud Mary, not very well. My husband made some comment about how it was a cool song and would be good once they “got” it. The friend, looking wild-eyed and aghast, said “No, you don’t understand, this is their [the teen band's] first and only song, they have been practicing it non-stop for two weeks!!!! I sympathize.

4. My sister has a story too. Picture a cross-country trip one hot summer in the 1970′s in an un-airconditioned car equipped with only an AM-radio: The Candy Man (Sammy Davis Jr.) and A Horse With No Name by America (Remember?? “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name…”). Enough said.

5. I am stealing this one from Jen who already picked it, but no annoying song list could be complete without It’s A Small World. There is no way that I could possibly match Jen’s hilarious description of the song and the ride of the same name at Disney, so I will be lazy and tell you to go read her words (her #2)! By the way, If you are really into self torture, please click my link (be brave Jen - do it, you know you want to!!). It is an up-tempo, somewhat “polka-esque” version, featuring an electronic organ with a few other instruments thrown in at “witty” moments.

6. How about 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall? Apparently the modern, more politically correct version is 99 Bottles of Pop on the Wall. Whether about beer or pop, this song could certainly make any bus driver commit suicide. Fond high school band memories again. I mean the annoying song sung COMPLETELY 10 times in a row…not the dead bus driver.

7. My last selection may not be well-known in the US: Live is Life (Opus). I first had the good fortune to “experience” this song living abroad in France when it was broadcast full blast right outside my apartment window…over, and over, and over again for several days at some sort of loud market that was visiting. If you have never heard it, please click the link to hear the excerpt so that you may truly appreciate my misery. Some other unforgettables from my years in France are: Da Da Da (Trio) and I Eat Cannibals (Toto Coelo - Total Coelo in the US). Sorry - but the link to I Eat Cannibals is via Amazon and will require slightly more work on your part. Well worth it though since it is truly, mind numbingly awful!

Wow, what an emotional journey. No wonder it took me a month to write, I may never be the same again!

I tag Wishy of Wishy The Writer (as in Wishy, proud member of the local CSA while I, Mom Unplugged, am a proud member of the local Flaccid Celery Club (FCC)). I tag only Wishy, since she is the sole blogger that I know well enough to put through this kind of torment (any other volunteers out there?). Sorry Wishy, just consider it revenge for your CSA!

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By Mom Unplugged, March 30, 2007 10:09 am

Apparently I have been tagged by Jen to be part of a fun blogroll idea that helps readers easily discover new blogs. Thank you, I have never been tagged for anything except for running too slowly in elementary school PE class and, most recently, for a tax audit. Here goes, I hope I do this right. By the way, if I link you and you want to be part of this then I am glad! The more the merrier! If you don’t want to do it, then feel free to opt out. No hard feelings.

Here are the rules:
1. Write a short paragraph at the beginning of your post and link back to the blog that put you on the list in the paragraph. This isn’t a suggestion. You need to break up the duplicate content string. Someone took the time to add you so the least you can do is give them an extra linkback.
2. Copy the list of originals below COMPLETELY and add it to your blog. If you would like a different keyword for your blog then change it when you do your post and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword.
3. Take the adds from the blog that added you and place them in the Originals list.
4. Add up to 5 new parenting or (Mommy/Daddy) blogs to the list in the My Adds section.

My Adds:
Toddler Planet
Crib Chronicles
The Not Quite Crunchy Parent
Crouching Mommy, Hidden Laundry
Purses And Poop

The Originals:
A Work of Art: Raising Our Exceptional Son
Ever After … My Way
Adventures In The 100 Acre Wood
An Island Life
Adoption and Fire
Lala Girl
The Bookworm Broadcast
Parenting Sites 411
Cass Knits
Geni Desu Yo
No Average Mom
Notes From The Trenches
Busy Mom.net
Groovy Mom
Coffee Time
My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
Toil
My Single Mom Life
Tips From The Money Goddess
Army Mom: New Jersey
Melissa’s Place
Three Sons and a Princess
Moot Thoughts and Musings
A family runs through it
Uglyhead
Parenting Toddlers
arewethereyetmom.com
HeartSongs
Kitchen Ramblings from a fairly odd Tofu mom
My Splatter Painted Life
The Adventures of Fantastagirl
Party of Six
Controlled Chaos
Never a Dull Moment
It’s Just the Coffee Talking
Supermom
Christina, Downloaded
Cursing Mama
scribbit
Unplug Your Kids
Don’t Try This at Home

Dumb Questions:

1) Can anyone tell me how these five people will know that I linked to them in this post? Just from their stats? I don’t really get the whole linking, keyword thing.

2) What does it mean in the instructions when it says: “If you would like a different keyword for your blog then change it when you do your post and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword.” What is a keyword? What is MY keyword?

I think I may be missing something important. If someone more knowledgeable has an explanation, please comment. Thanks in advance!

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By Mom Unplugged, March 21, 2007 8:10 pm

Thirteen Things I Never Dreamed I Would Ever Do

1. Discern a difference in performance between a “brand-name” disposable diaper, and a cheap “generic” diaper.

2. Bake my own bread without a machine…and enjoy it.

3. Pilot an airplane while nursing a baby.

4. Single-handedly care for three kids, six cats, one dog, and two birds.5. Maneuver an embarrassingly large SUV, toss a toy to the baby, put the favorite song on the CD player, distribute snacks, referee an argument over who called who “poopyhead,” and obey traffic rules - all at once.

6. Drink a glass of champagne that was older than I am.

7. Run around my backyard 10 minutes before my wedding scooping dog poop.

8. Become part of the “soccer-mom” demographic.

9. Get excited upon finding mysterious magenta-colored lint in the filter of my drier, instead of the usual grey variety. (Can you say “GET-A-LIFE?”).

10. Drive around town in a vehicle that should be condemned by the department of health.

11. Finish paying off my student loans.

12. Produce a perfect little miniature human being (actually three of them) from my own body.

13. Write a blog.